Jeremy Baker
Books on Early Medieval England
Two new books on Early Medieval England. Quite apart from anything else, both are exquisite objects.
"The First Kingdom" - Britain in the Age of Arthur (Max Adams 2021)
Focuses on the two centuries after the end of the Western Roman Empire around 400AD. Explores the archeological, geographical and limited textual evidence for continuity and change in this period, and the emergence of new forms of political and social organisation in the post-Roman era. [LibraryCatalog]
"The Anglo-Saxons" - A History of the Beginnings of England (Marc Morris 2021)
Covers a longer period from the end of Roman Britain to the Norman Conquest of 1066AD. Draws on much recent scholarship, archeology and analysis, but also seeks to provide a coherent narrative for the era. The role of the church and religion, and state formation, are given prominence, as well as key individuals both ecclesiastical and royal. [LibraryCatalog]
American Gods - Vols 1 - 3
Two new books...
Two new books arrived today. 📚
Both advance the notion that key philosophical ideas 'remade the world' - but advance completely opposite views of what that driver was. Tom Holland argues that Christianity is the defining underpinning of the modern world, while Stephen Greenblatt argues that it was the rediscovery of pre-Christian thinking in the renaissance that defined modernity.
Dominion - How the Christian Revolution Remade the World (Tom Holland, 2019)
The Swerve - How the World Became Modern (Stephen Greenblatt)
NZ Photography Collected
Excellently curated selection of Aotearoa New Zealand photography from some of the earliest nineteenth-century images to contemporary art photography.
5 stars to Inventing the World: Venice and the Transformation of Western Civilization by Meredith F. Small 📚
I’ve now been using LibraryThing for 15 years….
River Kings: A New History of Vikings from Scandinavia to the Silk Roads 📚
An exciting new book arrived today, detailing some fascinating new bioarchaeological findings from the Viking ‘Great Army’ mass burial at Repton, UK. A carnelian bead identified connections between western and eastern Viking expansion, travel and trade.
“Azadi” - Freedom, Fascism, Fiction - Arundhati Roy
An incredible set of essays on our times, focussed on India, but relevant everywhere.
4 random beautiful books from the Library. #beautifulbooks #buylocal #buylocalnz @vicbks @unitybookswgtn @goodbookshopnz #saynotoamazon
"The Viking Way: Magic and Mind in the Late Iron Age Scandinavia"
Neil Price (Oxbow Books 2013), 2nd Edition, 432 pages, hardback.
I have waited for this book for years - and now its here! What a tome. . .
mbnov
“Landscape and Memory" by Simon Schama made a huge impression on me when it first came out in 1995. It still resonates today. A masterwork of history and sociology. #mbnov
LibraryThing Catalog Entry
Bad Diaries, Verb Wellington, LitCrawl - truly wonderful#litcrawl #verbwellington #wellington #wellingtonnz #aotearoa #literature #poetry
This book pretty much is everything about me at the moment … #books #sheep #history #life #work #farming
A new book 📚 for the new library 📚 from a new bookshop 📚 #library #books #wellingtonnz #bookshop #nzbooks #nzbookshopday2020 @goodbookshopnz
"The Madman's Library" - The strangest books, manuscripts and other literary curiosities from history (Edward Brooke-Hitching, 2020)
“The Burning of Books - A History of Knowledge Under Attack” 📚 (John Murray 2020)
Attacks on knowledge and its importance are increasingly notable. Such attacks have a long history, and this book explores that history, and its continuing relevance.
The reading room takes shape… #renovations #kitchen #update #upgrade #warehouseapartment #openplan #design #evastreet #hannahslaneway #wellingtonnz
The Book of Koli
This looks like an interesting book 📚! Looks like another one I’ll need to track down and read…
Narrator Koli’s inquisitive mind and kind heart make him the perfect guide to Carey’s immersive, impeccably rendered world, and his speech and way of life are different enough to imagine the weight of what was lost but still achingly familiar, and as always, Carey leavens his often bleak scenarios with empathy and hope.
Work - a history of how we spend out time
James Suzman’s new book 📚 “Work - a history of how we spend out time” is a fascinating and thought-provoking review of the long run history of work and the impact of agriculture and industrialisation. It highlights the opportunity, in a world of increasing automation, to transform how we organise our lives and economies to support ourselves and each other. As John Maynard Keynes thought:
by 2030, capital accumulation, improvements in productivity and technological advances would have solved the “economic problem” and ushered in an age in which no one besides a few “purposive moneymakers” worked more than 15 hours in a week
We now have a chance to turn that prediction into reality.
Read more: The 300,000-year case for the 15-hour week – Finanz.dk
Just started reading: Alaric the Goth by Douglas Boin 📚